Author: Chris Lang

On 11 May 2018, Xinhua reported that Najib Balala, Kenya’s Minister for Tourism and Wildlife, had announced that Kenya plans to fast-track laws to make wildlife crimes punishable by the death penalty. Balala made the announcement during the launch of the northern white rhino commemorative stamps at Ol Pejeta Conservancy…

Mordecai Ogada, co-author of The Big Conservation Lie, has a challenge. “I challenge you to find any advertising brochure advertising safaris to Kenya that shows you black people, as clients. I challenge you.”

On Monday, 9 April 2018, five rangers and a driver were killed in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A sixth ranger was wounded. In a statement, Virunga National Park said it is, “deeply saddened to confirm reports of an attack on our staff today”.

In 2017, government authorities in India destroyed almost 8,000 homes and forcefully evicted nearly 40,000 people, in the name of conservation. That’s more than 20 homes destroyed and 109 people evicted every day.

The theme of this year’s World Wildlife Day on 3 March 2018 was “Big cats: predators under threat”. In a statement on the World Wildlife Day website, António Guterres, UN Secretary-General and John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General of the CITES Secretariat write that,

The Sengwer indigenous people who live in the Embobut forest in the western highlands of Kenya continue to face threats of violence and evictions. The latest round of violent evictions started at the end of December 2017. The evictions, carried out by the Kenya Forest Service, are supposedly in the…